Gill Goes.... Trekking the Bibbulmun Track... Mt Clare Shelter

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Day 43

Long Point Shelter to Mt Clare Shelter

13.6km (!!! short day!!!!)

A 4 hr walk today, getting in to Mt Clare at just after 1:30. Wrote this diary entry at 6pm inside my sleeping bag, inside my tent, inside the shelter in a storm.

The day started kind of badly after a really, really bad sleep. One of the group from last night had gone to bed at 6pm, the reason for this I guess was that he liked to get up at 4am and spend 2 hours getting ready for his day. Flossing, brushing, breakfasting, crinkling, unzipping, crinkling, packing, zipping, crinkling... we heard every single thing... really frustrating. Anyway, such is life on the track, each to their own, etc- I just wish he'd camped and gotten up at 4am and spent 2 hours getting ready for his day away from the hut.

Decided to take the day slowly given the shortness of it and headed 1km down to Little Cove for a while. Very spectacular. An angry sea and impending rain, the sky was a perfect colour. It was nice heading down and back packless. So light.

Dawdled and left camp at 0930. Hard work in the undulating dunes with drizzly rain! Nice change at the 6km mark on top of the Hush Hush Ridge (cool name)- an awesome 360 degree view of Mt Hopkins, Mt Clare and Mt Pingerup, Broke Inlet, Cliffy Heads, Chatham Island and the Southern Ocean. Really excellent views and a great spot for a coffee (love my thermos- have I said that before...?). It was re-energising after a low energy level morning. Felt considerably better heading off into the Nuyts Wilderness area (additional walking trails that you can do here) with banksia and interesting pockets of vegetation. Encountered a dieback station and info sign board- the first for a long time. Spotted some roos and lots of cat paw prints. Quite a diverse day of walking as I then headed back into forest. Conveniently there was even a bench to have lunch on and then a suspension bridge over the Deep River. Nice.

Spirits completely restored I was ready to tackle the ascent towards Mt Clare. Very dark and very damp climb for a kilometre and a half before the hut materialised. The big WOW factor at Mt Clare is that there are tingle trees- they are only found in the Walpole region and date back to the time of Gondwana. There are 2 right in front of the shelter- truly mighty trees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_jacksonii

Dropped my pack and decided to immediately head up to the peak- only 150m from the shelter. A little underwhelming in terms of peak-ness- it doesn't have a feeling of height as the vegetation around it is so dense. Nevertheless the exposed granite was dry and not slippery (woohoo) and the sun was out. Quite speccy views from here in all directions. The peaks to the east had a bluish hue in this light - quite lovely.

Back in the hut while I was setting up it got very overcast again and started raining. The temperature really plummeted over the next couple of hours so I ended up eating dinner at 4:30 and contemplating the sleeping bag (not to go to bed, unlike the hut mate of last night!). That was when the almighty storm hit and I succumbed to the tent- the wind and rain were blowing into the hut so I embedded back as far as I could into the corner. Knowing that this was my last night alone I was very pleased to have the shelter to myself again. And....given that I had my re-supply tomorrow in Walpole I was very happy to chew up my batteries and sit up late with my lantern and head torch blazing. Super late night (9pm) reading a very bad novel - Burning Bright by Tracey Chevalier.

Ironic title.




Impressions of the shelter- an excellent big Nornalup style shelter, although had it been full tonight there would have been a lot of wet people on the open ends with the weather coming in. Delightful number of frogs. It's always a bonus when there is a spur trail away from camp to a viewpoint. Yep, enjoyed this one.

Body assessment- excellent

Total people for the day- zero, zip, nada

Food Consumption- banana porridge, 2 dutch cookies, almond trail mix, lollies, thai laksa soup, 2 cheese triangles, 4 crackers, chilli with rice, 2 tim tams. Looking forward to my town steak tomorrow.

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